S&M Club Installation Tries To Be the Next Art Nouveau

A “bondage club” installation piece at the Vienna Secession museum’s got the Austrian far right’s panties all in a twist. Directly echoing the scandal that surrounded the Jugendstil movement and Gustav Klimt’s 1902 “erotic” Beethoven Frieze, Swiss artists Christoph Buchel transplants a swinging bondage S&M joint into the museum’s basement. The leather-clad frolicking doesn’t begin until after the museum closes, but club attendants leave their used set behind for the museum goers (18+) to walk through on the way to Beethoven Frieze, the centerpiece of the museum’s current exhibition. Visitors don’t seem to mind, but it’s unclear whether it’s the museum or the fetishists that are trying to spice things up here. |USA Today, Independent|